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When Tiffany masturbates these days, she doesn’t have Jake in mind. His constant working late and her constant dealing with the children have no room in her sex dreams. She had met Ada at her new escape route: a weekly book club. “Are you serious?” Jake had asked incredulously when she told him. “I haven’t seen you read anything in, well, never, really.” Tiffany knew he was right. “That isn’t the point.” “Then what is?”

That I need to be away from you. That I need time just for myself. That I will freak out if I have to wipe another butt while you are out at the office late at night. That I would rather read the most boring of books than sit next to you on the couch watching TV while waiting for Luke’s regular and familiar wailing at night. What she answered was “Everybody is allowed to have a hobby. Yours is apparently your job these days, so good for you. But I’ll be gone every Wednesday night so you had better be here.” If she noticed a flicker of guilt in Jake’s eyes she gracefully ignored it and ordered the first book to read online.

At the book club at the grandly looking café, everybody seemed relaxed and friendly. Whether by accident or on purpose Tiffany couldn’t figure out, but the group ended up being all women. Ada sat next to her the first two meetings and brought her a cup of coffee the third. “You look like you could need that,” she had explained, and Tiffany had blushed. “Do I look that horrid?” “Not at all, just tired. I figured you’re having a rough couple of weeks?” Tiffany swallowed and then nodded. Biting her lip she looked down trying very hard not to start crying. Here, in front of strangers with good lives. Here at the book club, where she hadn’t even mentioned her children and just introduced herself as “Tiffany.” Ada wasn’t fooled. She squeezed Tiffany’s arm and only said these six words: “It is going to be alright.” After the club Ada asked Tiffany if she wanted to get a drink, and she did. Anything but home.

At the bar the lights were dimmed just enough for Tiffany to hide the bags under her eyes and her flushed cheeks. But Ada didn’t inquire anymore. Instead, she downed the whiskey and talked.

“I was in a difficult marriage, too. It’s been several years now. We even went to therapy but in the end it didn’t work out. I guess we didn’t love each other enough. Maybe she cheated on me, I don’t know. When I met Mariella, I felt like this time was going to be different. We were in a relationship for three years before we broke it off. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, right?” Tiffany looked Ada into the eyes, for the first time? “Mariella?” Ada nodded. “Yes. She was with me for such a long time, it felt like I didn’t know how to go on. But on I went. And it turned out okay.” Ada ordered another round, both alcohol and Ada’s soothing voice relaxing Tiffany into sinking into her chair and sighing noisily. “Ada, that is a sad story,” she says, and Ada laughed at her. “Isn’t it? But look at me now! She couldn’t take everything away from me. The question is: will you let him take everything away from you?” Too surprised to be upset at this accusation, Tiffany first shrugged, then raised her glass and shook her head. “No, I won’t.” Ada smiled, satisfied. “Atta girl!” Their glasses clinked together in that dark pitched tone only whiskey tumblers can produce.

The book club? A safe place. An hour or so of thinking adult thoughts. Of reading sentences longer than one line. Of not making animal noises. Of drinking hard liquor afterward and somehow, suddenly, Tiffany dressed up for the club and put on jewelry. The first time, a  blouse showing off her cleavage, once. The next time the skirt was slightly shorter than necessary. The third time at the bar, Ada reached over to get more peanuts and happened to graze against Tiffany’s left breast for a second. She stopped mid-air: 21, 22. Two more seconds and she’s gone. It took Tiffany the whole night to realize that the shiver she had felt that second came from her lower body. She hadn’t felt it since giving birth to Luke: the thought hit her with too much force. This long? Seriously, this long?

The first time we met I cut my hand. That should tell you something.

I have carried a scar with me since that afternoon when I did the dishes and broke a glass that belonged to you. I would move on to break a lot more than that glass during the following months, but I’m not sure that matters much now.

A curious lack of words characterized those months, and not because there was no need for them. There damn well was, only I was too lazy to open my mouth and frankly didn’t care to hear what you had to say. I remember the afternoon you switched channels and asked me how I was doing. I shrugged and peeled the orange’s skin.

“It’s like the orange is me and you’re skinning me alive,” you said. That struck me as exaggeration at best, uncalled for, definitely, and obscure. I shrugged again.

“Don’t you think I’m being more gentle with you than that?” I asked. Later I came to regret that question: I hadn’t really wanted to know anyway.

“I do not think so, no. I wonder why you are here, eating my oranges on my bed.”

“You want the truth?” I replied, to gain some time to think some more. Thinking. I loved thinking a lot more than anything I else I did back then.

You picked up an orange peel and twirled it around your index finger. “I may want the truth, but I know I won’t get it. Not a single utterance of yours has been a hit with my internal truth detector.”

It would have been best to discard of both orange and us right then, but through the disgust we felt I answered

“The real question is why you’re content with the second best thing to the truth,” and before you could finally ask me what that second best thing was, I had already climbed on top of you.

An add-on to this vignette by pfpc.

Granted, things have not been going so well between them. Previously smooth conversations were marred, she feels, with his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the hurt she is causing. Why does he keep asking personal questions only to act betrayed when she tells him the truth? Always the truth. The truth is never pretty. Of course, he had known all this when he took her in at 16 years old, his sister’s offspring. Her mother felt obliged to move to Casablanca to be with Farid, leaving a daughter (who wasn’t great in school and had started costing her more money than anticipated) and a bunch of unpaid medical bills to her older brother. The niece-now-sort-of-daughter had quickly started to frustrate him with her absolute dedication to not lying, not even to be polite. “You have to phrase this differently!”, his battle cry of despair, her stamping her 17-year-old feet and screaming that she didn’t know how. The letter to his sister was requited with “She’s been tested. It’s an illness, she can’t do anything about it.”

He threw the letter out. There would have to be some rules from now on.

The “fruit” tea turned out to be nothing but earl grey and fake fruit add-ins, its bitterness causing Nikita to swallow hard and look around him for a sip of water. In the Netherlands, he had gotten used to pouring sugary cake toppings on his toast and call it breakfast, but the addition of black tea to every meal was more than he could handle. To Nikita, food, drinks and experiences should vary between sweet and sour: just strictly one at a time. This mixing of bitter and not confused not only his taste buds but also his brain. An unnecessary travel complication that he worked hard to not let spoil his fun. Outside there were mostly clouds and intermittent snowing. And a roaring breeze all the time. Upon waking in the tastefully decorated hotel room, the first thing he heard was the wind, the some child either laughing or crying: how could he be sure which? Later he breakfasted to the wind, he walked around in it and he went to bed with it. Yet he hadn’t seen the beach because it required extra determination after what had happened with Mikos and the seagulls. Nikita thought hard. He had no choice but to get back into the saddle, not literally as he was afraid of horses, and to brave the ocean.

As Nikita climbed the final dune, the wind exploded from the open sea and drove tears into his eyes.  

In the movies motions slow down in these scenes. Voices get distorted in slow capture, the protagonist stares at the physician’s mouth but is unable to make out what he (or she, but rarely) is saying. “You have cancer.” Or: “You may have cancer.” It is supposed to be lay person speak, but the brain is scheming and plotting and tries to mess with you. It doesn’t compute. “There is surgery, and first radiation therapy to shrink the tumor.” In the movies, the protagonist hears “Death. Death. Death. Death.” Ad infinitum. And then there is a nervous breakdown.

She looks down on the papery table cloth draped over that tiny table. The gynecologist and her having a nice little chat over charts and survival rates. A clock is ticking somewhere. “Miss Reynolds? We’ll have to run some tests to be sure, all we know is there is a lump. It could be benign, very likely is. We just want to make sure, don’t we?”

She notices a flower in a beige pot on the window sill. It sure is nice in here. Elegant understatement in interior design.

“Miss Reynolds?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. So you are saying I have cancer.” The softness in her physician’s eyes. The fine lines around her eyes as she replies. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I’ll make an appointment for you at the mammography center. Here’s their address. You’ll likely get in this week. Until then try to remain calm.” In the movies the doctors talk too fast and are impatient: ready to get rid of their dying patients, these soon-to-be corpses. Not her’s. Not here. She nods. Gets up. Shakes a hand. Gets out. Walks towards the metro. The note with the radiology department’s number and location feels warm in her coat pocket.

There is a bar around the corner and the distance to her bedroom, living room, kitchen and vodka stash is too long to bear. She sits down at the counter and orders clear alcohol, a steady flow of molecules: later the brain chemistry should be altered enough to make a return back home feasible. Useful even. She could check online how to get to the center. She could read up on treatment options. It’s cancer. “I’ll have another one!” The barkeeper is jaded and refrains from commenting on her speed. She drinks fast, routinely and precise. The warmth rises from her stomach through her throat and into her cheeks. Onto her lips. She does pride herself on her full lips, and she licks them now to trace their form and composition. Should she like what they feel like? She decides that she should; and also that she needs a bathroom break. The coat, the valuables. They’ll have to come with. Where is the bathroom? She trudges through the dimly lit main room towards the restrooms. She feels decidedly not drunk. It’s a little hot in here, but she can still think, which she does, and it is not to her liking. “Maybe I’ll speed things up,” she thinks, but wait, did she really only think this? Or why is that guy staring at her.

“Hello.” She says. “Hello,” he answers. His jeans are dark and his shirt seems out of place: ironed. Clean. His hair is flattened to his head. She touches her lips with her fingers. Her lips are healthy and full and he notices. Tomorrow she’ll have to call the center and press her breast between two glass plates until they are flattened like the planet used to be. In a minute she’ll be switching to whiskey sour. Right now she steps towards him and asks “Do you want to have sex with me?” He nods, decidedly unsurprised she notices, and follows her into the ladies’ room. There is a stall. There are sentences written in black marker all over the doors and walls. There is too little space and his head is on her neck. Her hands inside his pants, already. “I don’t have much time,” she whispers, and he pulls her T-shirt over her head. Down goes the bra.

She tries to cover her breasts but her hands are too small. He notices and leans back. “A little late to be ashamed now, isn’t it?” She smiles weakly. “It’s not that.” They stand there in lockdown, nothing goes. Finally, she drops her arms to her side. She watches for repulsion in his face, but can’t find it. Looking down she sees her breast is still deformed, still sick. “I think I have cancer,” she finally says and is prepared to pick up her shirt and leave. But he shakes his head and is dead-serious as he begins with the story.

“You do not have cancer. Your breasts are perfect. You see, you’re an example of humans evolving. Look how sexy you are. You are a new being, free, sexual, no procreational constraints. That’s why your breast is shaped differently. That’s all. You’re beyond normal because you are better.” He leans forward and licks her neck. Breathing out. “He’s right. It’s not cancer. It’s not cancer.” She closes her eyes. She feels thankful.

If I absolutely had to say whose fault it was, and I don’t really have to says my lawyer, then I’ll have to say it was Marisa’s own fucking fault. She was always up in our business at camp and always concerned about what we were and weren’t allowed to do. And we were like “Hello? who the fuck cares what is allowed and what isn’t. This isn’t kindergarten, we ‘ll do what we want.” So we did. But she freaked out about it literally every time. Lindsey told Marisa to just stay away from us then, but she came along anyways. Thing is, Marisa’s older brother was at camp as well, as a counselor. Lindsey had a thing for him so we was somehow nice to Marisa regardless. Marisa and her brother are pretty tight I guess. So even when she was annoying as heck Lindsey didn’t complain too much, even though both Nell and I told Marisa what we were really thinking.

It’s not our fault she still went with us to the stone bridge. We had met some guys earlier that week at the lake, some other campers, and Lindsey had told them to meet us. Four boys, three girls. When we arrived there were five guys though so that didn’t make much sense, but I thought, cool, I get to choose and I’m not taking the one with the glasses. Then Lindsey was all “don’t tell your brother” to Marisa. I guess she wanted to not seem like a whore to him, and Marisa said we should just go. The one guy laughed and I could see she was creeped out, but then another of the guys hit him on the arm and they reassured us they were alright and only here to make out.

I didn’t really care what Marisa’s brother would think of Lindsey or if Marisa would sleep with anybody, I wanted to make out with the tall one so I went over there and we went under the bridge. Next thing I hear Marisa screams and two guys run and Marisa was holding a stone in her hand. So Lindsey and I totally don’t know what’s going on but my guy was gone and I don’t have his fucking number. Marisa was sobbing, that stone in her hand and Larisa yells “You’re bleeding”, but it turns out it’s not even her own blood so what the hell.

We went back, Lindsey and me cussing Marisa out and her still crying and stammering something about a dude pinning her down. That’s the point! I get so upset, she keeps on whining and Lindsey tells me that Marisa’s shirt is ripped, so we throw the stone away, and I yell at Marisa to shut up and get her act together. She sobs and says something about telling her brother, and I freak out. I can’t have my parents know about this, and what if that dude whose blood she has on her shirt rats us out? So I grab her by the wrist and tell her “You keep your mouth shut! You shouldn’t have come anyway!” Marisa has a dark side to her or something I guess, because she suddenly talked back to me and being all rebel, trying to get away from me. So when I pushed her, I didn’t really know she was gonna hit her head on a root, you know, and get a concussion. She needn’t have ratted me out either. It’s not like we left her there, we called the camp counselors and paramedics and she was fine anyways. The guys we never heard back from either, so I don’t know if she was still a virgin or what happened, but you see now that I did nothing wrong, so why the fuck are you all getting on my case?

There is such a thing as loyalty in friendship, right? But Marisa clearly didn’t know about that one.

Through mutual acquaintances, Eliza and Dan had met Corrado at the pre-game dinner. “You into basketball?” he had asked Dan, who shook his head. Eliza had laughed and Corrado had been stumped on how to proceed with the conversation. After everybody had paid and moved on to different pursuits, he couldn’t help feel shortchanged in that encounter.

Still, Dan’s dark hair had seemed to shine under the cheap lamps, and Corrado could not quite recall the color of his eyes. The fact that he remembered anything about a person so convincingly uninteresting frightened Corrado a bit. “You’re such a coward!” his lover Nash had exclaimed, but it hadn’t mattered if that was true or not. Strong emotions of any kind, Nash had disclosed one night on the couch while the rain had hammered against the window, were what turned him on, whereas disinterest in the other person had no sooner sprung up than he was out the door. Or something like that. So, cowardice was a surefire way to entice Nash, Corrado had concluded and decided to not try to change his ways.

On his way to the basketball court he stumbled over a piece of wood on the sidewalk, tripped and almost fell. After catching his balance and his breath, he realized that absolutely nobody was on that road. Had he fallen, nobody could have helped, and who knew if he could have reached his phone. The thought of just lying there, on the wet sidewalk, was the most terrifying idea Corrado had had that week.

“Nash, if you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?” he asked one night in Nash’s kitchen amidst the cauliflower head, the zucchini he was busy cutting and the glasses of vodka and water standing everywhere. “I wouldn’t change a thing,” Nash said and added oil to the pan. The garlic sizzled. Corrado thought, I would change nearly everything. On the window sill Nash’s roommate had carefully positioned a black and white photograph of an elderly woman in a dark, knee-long dress. Some sequins were attached to her hemline, the sweetheart neckline exposing hints of her breasts. “Who’s this woman?” Corrado asked. Nash shrugged. “I think his grandmother when she was younger?” Corrado thought, I wish I was brave enough to wear that dress.

What a surprise! Or, in French, “quelle surprise!” Is what he probably would have exclaimed, had he not been taken aback by actually seeing the clouds so low that day. On his way to work he had to stop and take a moment to reconsider. Where was I going again, and in which direction?

“Yeah, you’d like to know that, wouldn’t you?” a sweet, soft, yet slightly ironic voice asked. He turned around, but a swishing sound reverted his attention back to, well, right in front of him. A far-fetched solution would be to run. He was no runner. He would fail. Also: where was he going again, and in which direction? Second to best solution? Talk back. He would not take this affront. “I would, for sure. So, which direction is the right one? Where does the fog lift, and who the hell are you?”

More laughter, cruel? Not quite, more … amused. “Would you not like to hear my story?” Voice asked. “A story about clouds?” Seductress Cloud was female, he now realized, and while she was certainly not speaking with a French accent, he would submit to her will for just a moment. “Okay. Tell me your story.”

The cloud skipped a beat, then curled itself around Grey (his name!) and enclosed him completely. “Where’s the plot?” Grey yelled at Cloud, who shrugged and lost a small amount of White while doing just that.

“Let’s at least do meta-fiction next time,” Grey sighed, and stuffed his mouth with the cloudy cotton candy.

Steeped in Catholic baptism, confession and transformation of bread into flesh, the first corpse Catherine saw was the neighbor’s mother, all prepared and peaceful in her coffin at the cemetery’s chapel. A mere eight years old, Catherine did not touch the body, but remarked how it resembled the woman when she had been alive. To be fair, Catherine was not entirely sure if she would have recognized the now-dead matriarch; there were many faces in their village that shouted out her and her father’s name, but didn’t tell her theirs.

Catherine’s features resembled her own mother’s significantly, as she would later recognize in photos of her with no glasses on next to a picture of her mother in a seventies’ style mini skirt. They shared the legs, the noses, the mouths and the smiles. There may have been fights. There was certainly a large number of insults and hurt feelings. Control more or less successfully exerted, from one to the other and vice versa. What there wasn’t was an assumption that just maybe they were not directly related, that among the hordes of siblings and cousins one did not adhere to the pope’s words on premarital sexual intercourse and slipped the unwanted child to a distant relative. Catherine’s genes spoke loudly of where she came from. This was a comfort, but more than that it complicated the struggle. How does one distance oneself from a mirror image?

Compared to her equally Catholic friends, Catherine’s parents at least did not tell her babies were brought by storks, grew in a woman’s knees, and the sex education began early with children’s books on sisterhood and procreation. At least there was that, a certain preparation for a life to be lived to its fullest potential, well, at least to some extent. And when Catherine secretly hid her stained underpants from their gaze, unaccustomed still to the regularity of her menstrual flow and all its implications, her mother hugged her and told her there was nothing to be ashamed of.

Except there was, and everybody knew it. A friend’s sister got pregnant and with the question “But could YOU get rid of it?” shut her mother right up and went on to become herself a mother, twice. Except the older man on the bus on a church choir trip to France was a very active member of his congregation and brought along an extremist magazine in which Indonesian Muslims were said to cut off orang-utans hands. Except her aunt told them all at a family gathering that with the increase in immigration from Russia, Catholics had become a minority in their area, and how about that? Except more cousins had babies and divorces and more babies and one wedding in white after the other, only Catherine was not invited for financial reasons and what was she supposed to say when the hymn filled the church and the priest’s words seemed unreliable?

There was something shameful about her heritage that drove her to navigate conversations on faith carefully, keeping her mouth shut about her lack of it. The irony of the atheist silenced by the women and men of religion did not escape her.